JEAN MARIE ABRAHAM, PH.D.
Jean Marie Abraham is currently an Assistant Professor of Health Economics in the Division of Health Services Research and Policy, in the School of Public Health, at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include household decision-making regarding employer-based health insurance, the impact of health insurance on labor market outcomes, consumer use of information in health care decisions, and competition in the markets for health care coverage and hospital services. In 2001, she received her Ph.D. from the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to pursuing her graduate studies, she had internships with the Office of U.S. Senator John McCain and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
ANNA AIZER, PH.D.
Anna Aizer (Ph.D., Economics, UCLA, 2002) is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Brown University. She is also a faculty research fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Aizer’s research focuses on the health and well-being of children. Previous work has focused on the issues of program participation among low income families, especially in the context of the Medicaid program. This has included examinations of the role of outreach and network effects in increasing Medicaid program take-up among children as well as the impact of expanding Medicaid eligibility to parents on child take-up rates. Aizer’s current research focuses on the causes and consequences of domestic violence. In particular, she looks at the relationship between the closing of the male-female wage gap and falling rates of violence against women and the relationship between income, family violence and child health.
MARGARITA ALEGRIA, PH.D.
Dr. Margarita Alegría is Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research (CMMHR) at Cambridge Health Alliance, and a full professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She has devoted her professional career to researching disparities in mental health and substance abuse services. A natural collaborator, Dr. Alegría has worked with investigators and researchers across the United States and Puerto Rico to generate research focused on improving health services for Latinos and other minority populations.
As the Director of CMMHR, Dr. Alegría oversees an interdisciplinary group of researchers and scholars, including psychologists, social policy analysts, health economists, psychiatrists, data analysts, sociologists, and other professionals that assist in the research, analysis and administration of the Center projects. She currently serves as the Principal Investigator of three National Institute of Mental Health-funded research studies. The Latino Research Program Project (LRPP) focuses on research to improve the mental health care of Latino populations, while the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) aims to estimate mental health and substance abuse disorders as well as rates of mental health and health service use for a nationally representative sample of Asians and Latinos. Additionally, Dr. Alegría serves as co-Principal Investigator of the NCMHD-funded Excellence in Partnerships for Community Outreach, Research on Health Disparities and Training (EXPORT). This study proposes to generate and test interventions that can remedy service disparities in asthma and mental health for disadvantaged Latino and African Caribbean populations.
Dr. Alegría's published works focus on the areas of mental health services research, conceptual and methodological issues with minority populations, risk behaviors, and disparities in service delivery. She received her Ph.D. from Temple University and was awarded the 2003 Mental Health Section Award at the 131st conference of the American Public Health Association.
CYNTHIA BANSAK, PH.D.
Cynthia Bansak is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at San Diego State University. Prior to her current position, she was an Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at San Diego and a B.A. in economics from Yale University. Her research and teaching interests fall broadly within the field of labor economics. Current work focuses on the relationship between banking and remittances, and the role of access to transportation in determining employment outcomes.
REAGAN BAUGHMAN, PH.D.
Reagan Baughman is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of New Hampshire. She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Drew University in Madison, NJ in 1996 and her Ph.D. in Economics from Syracuse University in 2001. From 2001 to 2003 she was a research fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include the effectiveness of tax subsidies to employer-provided health insurance for lower-skill workers, the impact of Medicaid and SCHIP expansions on coverage patterns for children and the labor market for nursing and home health aides.
HUGO BENITEZ-SILVA, PH.D.
Hugo Benítez-Silva obtained his M.A., M.Ph., and Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in December 2000. His research includes contributions to the analyses of disability programs in the United States, dynamic life-cycle models of annuity and portfolio decisions with an emphasis on modeling the effects of uncertainty in wage income and capital investments, the study of retirement expectations, and the labor supply effects of the early retirement rules. His current work includes the estimation of a dynamic structural life-cycle model of retirement and disability, a dynamic analyzes of job search behavior among older Americans, and the connection between automobile recalls and accidents. His research projects have received support from the Michigan Retirement Research Center, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the TIAA-CREF Institute, the National Institute of Aging, and the Economic Research Initiative for the Uninsured through the RWJ Foundation. His research has been published in journals like the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, and Labour Economics.
JAY BHATTACHARYA, M.D., PH.D.
Jay Bhattacharya is an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University. Jay finished his M.D. in 1997 and was awarded his Ph.D. in 2000 on the subject of physician wages in the United States. Bhattacharya's research interests can best be summarized as the microeconometric analysis of health and health care for special populations. He has published empirical economics and health services research papers on the elderly, on adolescents, on HIV patients, on the disabled, on injured workers, and on managed care experts. Most recently, he has done work on the regulation of viatical settlements market, which is a secondary life insurance market popular among HIV patients, and on summer-winter differences in nutritional outcomes for poor American families.
REBECCA M. BLANK, PH.D.
Rebecca M. Blank is Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School
of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Henry Carter Adams
Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics.
She is also the co-director of the National Poverty Center at the
Ford School, funded by HHS to promote poverty-related research.
Prior to coming to Michigan, she served as a Member of the President's
Council of Economic Advisers from 1997-1999. She has been Professor
of Economics at Northwestern University and served as the first
Director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint
Center for Poverty Research. Professor Blank's research has
focused on the interaction between the macroeconomy, government
anti-poverty programs, and the behavior and well-being of low-income
families. Her 1997 book, It Takes A Nation: A New Agenda for
Fighting Poverty, won the Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book
in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations. Her more recent work
includes the book Finding Jobs: Work and Welfare Reform (jointly
edited with David Card, 2000, Russell Sage Press), The New
World of Welfare (jointly edited with Ron Haskins, 2001, Brookings Press),
and Is the Market Moral? (co-authored with William McGurn, 2003,
Brookings Press). She has served in a wide variety of advisory
and professional roles and is a faculty affiliate of the National
Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
LINDA J. BLUMBERG, PH.D.
Linda J. Blumberg, Ph.D. is an economist and senior research associate at the Urban Institute. She is currently working on a variety of projects
related to private health insurance and health care financing. Her recent work includes: an analysis of the private and public cost impacts of government reinsurance programs; a decomposition of the sources of the decline in employer-sponsored insurance over the last recession; and an analysis of recent changes in the health insurance coverage of the middle class. She has estimated the coverage and risk pool impacts of tax credit proposals and public insurance expansions, estimated price elasticities of employers offering and workers taking-up health insurance, and analyzed the effects of insurance market reforms on the risk pool of the privately insured. She is also the principal investigator in the development and use of the Urban Institute's Health Insurance Reform Simulation Model (HIRSM). From August 1993 through October 1994 Dr. Blumberg served as health policy advisor to the Clinton Administration during its initial health care reform effort. Her research has been
published in a number of journals, including Health Affairs, Inquiry, and the Journal of Health Economics.
GEORGE J BORJAS, PH.D.
George J. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Borjas has written extensively on labor market issues. He is the author of several books, including Labor Economics (McGraw-Hill, 1996; 2 nd Edition, 2000), and Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton University Press, 1999). He has published over 100 articles in books and scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Professor Borjas currently edits the Review of Economics and Statistics.
JOHN BOUND, PH.D.
John Bound, Professor of Economics, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and joined the faculty at Michigan in 1987. He is interested in labor economics, demography and econometrics. Professor Bound is also a Research Associate of the Population Studies Center and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His current research interests include work on the economic and health status of minority populations in the U.S. and the effects of transfer programs on behavior and economic well being. He has also worked on issues regarding changes in the wage structure over time and on the validity of survey data. His teaching centers on econometrics and labor economics.
CHARLES BROWN, PH.D.
Charles Brown is an empirically-oriented labor economist. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1974, and taught at the University of Maryland from 1975 to 1985. In 1985 he came to the University of Michigan as Professor of Economics, and Research Scientist in the Survey Research Center. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research has focused on a wide range of topics such as compensating differentials, effects of minimum wage laws and of EEO policies, the determinants of enlistment and re-enlistment in the military, the relationship between employer size and labor market outcomes, and measurement error in survey data. Current work focuses early-retirement "windows," and consequences of the relatively equal opportunity in the military for children of black soldiers.
THOMAS BUCHMUELLER, PH.D.
Thomas Buchmueller is Professor of Economics and Public Policy and Director of the Center for Health Care Management and Policy at the University of California Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business. Professor Buchmueller is also an affiliate of UCI's Center for Health Policy Research and a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau
of Economic Research. He is a Deputy Editor of Medical Care, Co-Editor of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and is on the Editorial Board of Inquiry.
Professor Buchmueller is a health economist whose main research interests involve the economics of private and public health insurance. He has done considerable research on the economics of managed competition, including several studies on the effect of prices on the
health plan choices of consumers. He has also published several studies on the effect of employer-provided health insurance on the labor market decisions of workers and employers, the regulation of private health insurance, and the effects of public insurance expansions on public and private coverage.
M. KATE BUNDORF, PH.D.
Kate Bundorf is an Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and her MBA and MPH degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in 1996. Her research interests are in the general areas of health economics and health insurance markets. She is currently working on projects examining risk selection in health insurance markets, the effects of health insurance mandates, and the impact of health plan report cards on quality of care.
MARIA CANCIAN, PH.D.
Maria Cancian is Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs, an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology, and Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty. Her research is in the area of domestic social policy. Her recent research considers the impact of married women's growing employment and earnings on marriage patterns and the inter- and intra-household distribution of income, the work and income of women who have received welfare, and the implications of child support and custody for the well-being of divorced and never-married families. Since 1997 she has been Principal Investigator, with Daniel R. Meyer, of the Child Support Demonstration Evaluation, which evaluates child-support policy implemented as part of welfare reform in Wisconsin.
Professor Cancian has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. She is Secretary of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Her articles have appeared in journals including Demography, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Review of Economics and Statistics and Social Service Review . She received her doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan.
ZHUN CAO, PH.D.
Zhun Cao, Ph.D., is the Associate Director for Methodological Affairs at the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research, Cambridge Health Alliance. She received a Ph.D. degree in economics from Boston University in January, 2003. Her research interests are risk selection and its impact on mental health care services, insurance for vulnerable populations, and economics of health care disparities. Dr. Cao was awarded a Presidential University Graduate Fellowship at Boston University from 1996 to 2000, and the Robert Dorwart Doctoral Student Podium Presentation Honorary Title in 2002 from the NIMH. Her paper "Service -level Selection by HMOs in Medicare (joint with Thomas G. McGuire), was published in the Journal of Health Economics in 2003. Also, Dr. Cao is the Principal Investigator of a pending NIMH project on HMO Selection Incentives and Underprovision of MH Care.
JOHN CAWLEY, PH.D.
John Cawley is an associate professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 1999-2001. His primary field of research is health economics; his research on insurance has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Health Economics, and Frontiers in Health Policy Research. John has served on advisory committees and expert panels for the Institute of Medicine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. He is an associate editor of the journal Economics and Human Biology, and in 2005 was awarded the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators in health services research.
MICHAEL CHERNEW, PH.D.
Dr. Chernew is Professor at the University of Michigan
in the department of Health Management and Policy. He also has
appointments in the departments of Internal Medicine, and Economics.
He received a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, where
his training focused on areas of applied microeconomics and econometrics.
Dr. Chernew is Co-Editor of the American Journal of Managed
Care and Co-Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Scholars
in Health Policy Research program at the University of Michigan.
One major area of Dr. Chernew's research focuses on assessing the
impact of managed care on the health care marketplace, with an
emphasis on examining the impact of managed care on health care
cost growth and on the use of medical technology. In 2000 and 2004,
he served on technical advisory panels for the Center for Medicare
and Medicaid Services (CMS) that reviewed the assumptions used
by the Medicare actuaries to assess the financial status of the
Medicare trust funds. On the panels Dr. Chernew focused on the
methodology used to project trends in long term health care cost
growth. Other research has examined determinants of patient choice
of hospital and the impact of health plan performance measures
on employee and employer selection of health plans. In 1998, he
was awarded the John D. Thompson Prize for Young investigators
by the Association of University Programs in Public Health. In
1999, he received the Alice S. Hersh, Young Investigator Award
from the Association of Health Services Research. Both of these
awards recognize overall contribution to the field of health services
research. Dr. Chernew is a Research Associate of the National Bureau
of Economic Research and he is on the Editorial Boards of Health
Services Research, Health Affairs, and Medical
Care Research and Review.
YOONYOUNG CHO, PH.D.
Yoonyoung obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2005. She is currently an associate research fellow at Korean Development Institute. Her research fields are public economics, labor economics, and applied econometrics. In particular, poverty reducing policies have been her main interest. She has conducted research on welfare and public assistance programs in the U.S. Recent projects include an examination of child care subsidies on low income single mothers after the welfare reform in 1996 and an evalution of Wisconsin's SCHIP on low income mother's health coverage and labor market outcomes. She also pays attention to poverty reducing programs in other countries. Her studies include research on the effects of an educational subsidy program in Mexico and welfare programs in Korea. In addition, she is currently working on career and marriage decision of young women in the U.S., examining their incentives and responses to changes in environment.
CYNTHIA COLEN, PH.D., M.P.H.
Cynthia Colen is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the production and intergenerational reproduction of racial and ethnic health disparities, especially as they relate to women's reproductive wellbeing and perinatal outcomes. She is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University as well as a research affiliate of the University of Michigan Population Studies Center. Dr. Colen received an M.P.H. (1998) and a Ph.D. (2005) in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan. Much of her research focuses on the extent to which upwardly mobile African American and White women in the United States are able to translate their newfound socioeconomic status into beneficial health outcomes. Another area of interest involves exploring patterns of reliance and sources of resiliency within extended kinship networks among members of marginalized populations. As a Health and Society Scholar, Dr. Colen is currently investigate the linkages between restricted returns to educational investments, residential segregation, and excess rates of morbidity and mortality among poor and nonpoor African Americans.
JULIE CULLEN, PH.D.
Julie Cullen is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California , San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Spring of 1997, and served as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar from 1999-2001. Dr. Cullen's research interests fall broadly within the field of public economics. She has authored several papers within the economics of education, investigating the impact of school finance and school choice policies on students, families, schools, and other local government programs. Other studies analyze issues in the design of social insurance programs, such as unemployment insurance and disability insurance. Recent work describes how vulnerable populations fare when energy bills rise, and how cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes for low-income children are influenced by health insurance status.
DAVID CUTLER, PH.D.
David Cutler is Professor of Economics in the Faculty
of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the economics of
health care. He served in 1993 as Senior Staff Economist at the
Council of Economic Advisers and Director of the National Economic
Council. Cutler was primarily involved in drafting the Clinton
Administration's health care reform proposal. He also served on
several government advisory panels, including groups at the National
Institutes of Health, the Social Security Administration, and the
Health Care Financing Administration. Currently, he is examining
the sources of cost growth in medical care, the productivity of
the medical system, and the relationship between public provision
of medical care and private insurance coverage. Cutler is also
an editor of the Journal of Health Economics. He received his BA
in economics from Harvard in 1987 and his PhD in economics from
MIT in 1991. He lives in Boston, where he enjoys running, ultimate
Frisbee, walking along the Charles River, and reading history.
SHELDON DANZIGER
Sheldon Danziger is the Henry J. Meyer Distinguished University
Professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Co-Director
of the National Poverty Center, Research Professor, Population
Studies Center and Director of the Research and Training Program
on Poverty and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He
is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and a member of the Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood,
sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. Danziger's research focuses
on trends in poverty and inequality and the effects of economic
and demographic changes and government social programs on disadvantaged
groups. He is currently analyzing the effects of the 1996 welfare
reform on the work and well-being of single mothers. He is the
co-author of America Unequal (Harvard University Press, 1995)
and Detroit Divided (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000) and co-editor
of Understanding Poverty (Harvard University Press, 2002) and
numerous other books and articles in refereed journals and conference
volumes.
MATTHEW M. DAVIS, M.D., MAPP
Matthew M. Davis, MD, MAPP, is Assistant Professor of
Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and Public Policy at the University
of Michigan. He has developed a research program that focuses
on the critical study of financing and delivery of preventive health
services within the context of insurance status. He has a particular
interest in the economics and practice of immunizations and obesity
prevention, and in public policy that impacts the patient-physician
relationship regarding these important preventive services. Dr.
Davis has received extramural funding for his work from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Agriculture
Economic Research Service, has served as an invited speaker for
the National Immunization Program and the National Vaccine Advisory
Committee. He has published his research in journals such as Journal
of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, American
Journal of Public Health, and Pediatrics, and has received local and national
honors for his research.
THOMAS DELEIRE, PH.D.
Thomas Deleire is Senior Analyst at the
Congressional Budget Office and Assistant Professor in the Department
of Economics at Michigan State University. From 2003 to 2004 he
was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University and from 2002 to 2003 he was Senior Economist
for labor, health, and education for President Bush's Council
of Economic Advisers. He was Assistant Professor in the Harris
School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago from
1997 to 2004. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University
in 1990 and received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University
in 1997.
MATTHEW DEY, PH.D.
Matthew Dey received his PhD from New York University in May 2001 after completing his dissertation entitled "Employer-Provided Health Insurance: Mobility, Efficiency, and Labor Market Equilibrium." He joined the University of Chicago faculty in August of 2000.
IRENA DUSHI, PH.D.
Irena Dushi, Ph.D., is a Research Analyst at the International Longevity Center-USA. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE) in Prague (Czech Republic) in 1998 funded by the Soros Foundation. Prior to joining the ILC in 1999, she held a research fellowship position at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna (under a European Union fellowship program) and an exchange fellowship at the City University of New York. She has taught several courses in the Economics Department at Hunter College in New York.
Dr. Dushi is a labor economist with research interests in the economics of aging and health insurance. Since joining ILC, her work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Labor, Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, Boston College's Steven H. Sandell Grant Program for Junior Scholars in Retirement Research, University of Michigan's Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Care Financing and Organization (HCF) Initiative. Her current work focuses on employment-related health insurance demand by dual-earner households, disparities in the use of health services and health outcomes before and after the age of Medicare eligibility, and the demand for annuities. She has published work on the demand for health insurance in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, and on the design of employee benefits in a book entitled Benefits for the Workplace of the Future, edited by Olivia Mitchell et al., and published by the Pension Research Council.
RANDALL ELLIS, PH.D
Randall Ellis is a Professor of Economics at Boston University where he has been on the faculty since 1981. He is currently a director of the International Health Economics Association and the American Society of Health Economists, as well as an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics. Professor Ellis is best known for his work on provider, and health plan payment incentives, particularly on how payments affect consumer, provider and health plan decisions. He is one of the co-developers of the Diagnostic Cost Group risk adjustment model currently being used for the U.S. Medicare program to capitate managed care plans.
JOSE J. ESCARCE, PH.D
José J. Escarce, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Senior Natural Scientist at RAND. Dr. Escarce graduated from Princeton University, earned a Master's degree in Physics from Harvard University and obtained his medical degree and doctorate in health economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Escarce has served on the National Advisory Council for Health Care Policy, Research, and Evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Advisory Committees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Minority Medical Faculty Development Program. He is past Chair of the Health Economics Committee of the American Public Health Association, and has served on numerous Institute of Medicine and National Research Council committees and panels. He was Deputy Editor of the journal Medical Care and is currently Senior Associate Editor of Health Services Research. Dr. Escarce's research interests include provider and patient behavior under economic incentives, access to care, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, and immigrant health, and the impact of managed care on cost and quality.
SUSAN L. ETTNER, PH.D.
Susan L. Ettner is Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research in the UCLA Department of Medicine and in the Department of Health Services in the UCLA School of Public Health. Dr. Ettner obtained her Ph.D. in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. She was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School in the Department of Health Care Policy prior to joining UCLA as a tenured Associate Professor in 1999. Her research interests include reciprocity in the relationship between health and labor market outcomes, mental health and substance abuse services, insurance markets and managed care, chronic disability, post-acute and long-term care. Dr. Ettner was the 2001 recipient of the Alice S. Hersch New Investigator Award by the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy, given each year to the outstanding new health services researcher in the country.
Dr. Ettner's current research projects include analyses of the cost-effectiveness of a randomized, integrated patient-provider intervention to prevent harmful and hazardous alcohol use in the elderly; treatment patterns and their relationship to outcomes among managed behavioral health patients; the impact of provider reimbursement incentives on the quality of diabetes care in managed care settings; risk adjustment of behavioral health care costs in the VA and Medicare among dual enrollees; the cost-effectiveness of a self-care intervention for elderly minority patients with diabetes; predictors of health services and long-term care use among triply diagnosed HIV+ patients; longitudinal wage mobility among Californians; cost-effectiveness of a randomized, personalized motivational intervention aimed at reducing alcohol/drug use and psychological distress among orofacial injury patients who have alcohol/drug problems; the role of depression and medical comorbidity in work disability and the use of private disability insurance; the cost-effectiveness of a community-based intervention for Alzheimer's patients; a pilot study of provider financial incentives for improving the quality of depression care; and a policy evaluation of the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (SACPA) of 2000.
CHRISTOPHER FLINN, PH.D.
Christopher Flinn is Professor of Economics at New York
University, a Coeditor of the Journal of Human Resources, and
an Associate Editor of the European Economic Review and
the Review of Economics of the Household . He is a Research
Affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Research Fellow of IZA (Bonn),
a member of the Scientific Committee of CHILD at the University
of Torino, and has recently been elected as President of the European
Society for Population Economics (ESPE). He earned his Ph.D. in
economics from the University of Chicago after studying demography
at the University of Michigan, and has previously taught at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include
labor market dynamics (especially job mobility) and intrahousehold
bargaining. He is currently completing a monograph on theoretical
and empirical approaches to assessing the impact of the minimum
wage on labor market outcomes for the Upjohn Institute for Employment
Research. Other projects in progress include research on the relationship
between child outcomes and the marital status of parents (with
Meta Brown), the construction and estimation of a model of intrahousehold
bargaining and labor market search (with Matt Dey), and the estimation
of a model of household labor supply with an endogenous decision
of whether to behave cooperatively (with Daniela Del Boca).
BOWEN GARRETT, PH.D
Dr. Bowen Garrett is a Senior Research Associate in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. He is currently leading research projects on the effects of recession on insurance coverage, racial and ethnic disparities in health care access and utilization, and Medicare's new prospective payment system for inpatient psychiatric facilities. He is also working with a team of researchers on ways to improve Medicare's prospective payment system for skilled nursing home facilities. His recent publications examined the health insurance coverage implications of leaving welfare, the effects of Medicaid managed care on health services access and use, the effects of welfare policies and economic factors on Medicaid caseloads, and policy interactions between the Supplemental Security Income and Aid to Families with Dependent Children programs.
Before joining the Urban Institute in 1998, Dr. Garrett was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Garrett obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 from the Department of Economics at Columbia University, with specializations in econometrics and labor economics.
ARLINE GERONIMUS,
SC.D.
Arline Geronimus is a Professor in the Department
of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of
Michigan School
of Public Health and a Research Professor at the Institute for
Social Research. She is also affiliated with the Center for Research
on Ethnicity, Culture and Health. Dr. Geronimus received her
doctorate in Behavioral Sciences from the Harvard University
and did post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School. Dr.
Geronimus' research interests include structural and cultural
influences on population variation in family structure and age-at-first
birth; the effects of poverty, institutionalized discrimination,
and aspects of residential areas on health; the collective strategies
marginalized communities employ to mitigate, resist, or undo
the harmful effects of poverty and structural racism on their
health; and the perturbations public policies sometimes cause
in these autonomous protections. Dr. Geronimus has worked with
the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the Detroit Mayor's "Dying
Before Our Time" Task Force, and the Aspen Institute's Roundtable
on Comprehensive Community Initiatives to revitalize American
cities.
DANA GOLDMAN, PH.D.
Dana Goldman holds the RAND Chair in Health Economics and is Director of Health
Economics at RAND. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Health Services and Radiology at UCLA.
His research interests combine applied microeconomics and health economics-with a special interest
in the economics of chronic disease. His work has been published in leading medical, economic,
statistics, and health policy journals and has been funded by both the public and private sectors,
including NIH, NIA, NCI, NSF, Amgen, Merck, Genentech, California Healthcare Foundation, Smith Richardson
Foundation, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Most recently, he is the director of the RAND Roybal Center for Health Policy Simulation designed to provide
better estimates of the impact of health policy changes. He is on several editorial boards including
Health Affairs and the American Journal of Managed Care. Dr. Goldman was the recipient of the National
Institute for Health Care Management Research Foundation award for excellence in health policy, and the
Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award that recognizes the outstanding contributions of a young scholar to
the field of health services research. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of
Economic Research. He received his B.A from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Economics from
Stanford University.
JEFFREY T. GROGGER, PH.D.
Jeffrey Gorgger is a Professor in the Harris School of
Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Professor Grogger is
an economist who has written on crime, on the economic consequences
of teen childbearing, on the economics of education, and on transfer
programs, among other topics. Much of Professor Grogger's recent
work focuses on welfare time limits, which are among the most fundamental
of the welfare reforms implemented in the mid- 1990s. He is a Research
Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Policy Research (Cambridge,
MA) and a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor
(Bonn, Germany). He serves as co-editor of the Journal of Human
Resources and sits on the editorial boards of Economic
Inquiry and the Journal of Population Economics.
JONATHAN GRUBER, PH.D.
Dr. Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the Director of the Program on Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics , and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Economics.
Dr. Gruber received his B.S. in Economics from MIT, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. He has received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a FIRST award from the National Institute on Aging, and the Kenneth Arrow Award for the Best Paper in Health Economics in 1994. He was also one of 15 scientists nationwide to receive the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award from the National Science Foundation in 1995. During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department.
Dr. Gruber's research focuses on the areas of public finance and health economics. His recent areas of particular interest include the economics of employer provided health insurance, the efficiency of our current system of delivering health care to the indigent, the effect of the Social Security program on retirement behavior, and the economics of smoking.
JENNIFER HAAS, PH.D.
Dr. Jennifer Haas is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She is a general internist with a master's
degree in health policy from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests include studying racial and ethnic differences in access to care and health outcomes, elucidating the complex relationship between the characteristics of an individual's social and physical environment, health care utilization, and health outcomes.
DARRICK HAMILTON, PH.D.
Darrick Hamilton is an Assistant Professor at the Robert J. Milano
Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School
University. He earned a Ph.D. from the Department of Economics
at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At the University
of North Carolina, he received the department's Most Outstanding
Teaching Assistant Award, and upon graduation received the
National Economic Association's 2001 Rhonda M. Williams Dissertation
Award. Professor Hamilton was a Ford Foundation Fellow on Poverty,
the Underclass and Public Policy at both the Poverty Research
and Training Center, and the Program for Research on Black
Americans at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor from 1999-2001.
Hamilton was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health
Policy Research at Yale University from 2001-2003. His research
agenda involves examining the welfare of less "privileged" groups
and ethnic/racial group competition for preferred economic
and health outcomes. He has published numerous articles on
ethnic and racial disparities in; wealth, homeownership, and
labor market outcomes. His research agenda has been supported
by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation.
MARY E. HARRINGTON, M.P.P.
Mary Harrington is a Research Investigator for the Economic Research
Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU). In addition to translating
research findings for policy audiences, she oversees ERIU's research
agenda on vulnerable populations and is conducting research on
coverage dynamics for low income children and families. Prior to
joining ERIU, Ms. Harrington was a Senior Researcher at Mathematica
Policy Research, Inc. (MPR), where her research focused on Medicaid,
managed care, child health and safety-net programs and providers.
While at MPR, she participated in several national evaluations
of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and related
Medicaid outreach and enrollment efforts. Ms. Harrington received
her Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan and
is currently enrolled in the doctoral program in Health Services
Organization and Policy at the University.
ROBERT HAVEMAN, PH.D.
Robert Haveman is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Affairs and Research Affliliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published widely in the fields of public finance, the economics of environmental and natural resources policy, benefit-cost analysis, and the economics of poverty and social policy. Recent publications include Succeeding Generations: On the Effects of Investments in Children. Current projects include work on the discrepancy in reported earnings in surveys compared to administrative records, on the adequacy of savings of older workers beginning retirement, and on implications of increased economic inequality for human capital in the future. He is an award-winning teacher, who continues to teach at the La Follette School, of which he was director from 1988 to 1991. He was director of the Institute for Research on Poverty from 1971 to 1975.
Professor Haveman has served as senior economist, Subcommittee on Economy in Government, Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress. He was a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation and, on two occasions, a research associate at Resources for the Future. In 2003, he and co-authors Andrew Bershadker and Jonathan A. Schwabish published the book Human Capital in the United States from 1975 to 2000: Patterns of Growth and Utilization (Kalamazoo, MI: Upjohn Institute for Employment Research). His work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Journal of the American Statistical Association.
He received his doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University.
RICHARD HIRTH, PH.D. Dr. Richard Hirth is Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy, and Chairman of the Health Services Organization and Policy (HSOP) Doctoral Program. He received his Bachelor's degree in Economics from Carleton College, and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Hirth has received several research awards, including the Kenneth J. Arrow Award in Health Economics, awarded annually by the American Public Health Association and the International Health Economics Association to the best paper in health economics (1993); the Excellence in Research Award in Health Policy from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation (1998); and the Thompson Prize for Young Investigtors from the Association of University Programs in health Administration (1999).
MARJORIE HONIG, PH.D.
Marjorie Honig is Professor of Economics at Hunter College and
the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Her
research interests include worker and household decisions regarding
employer-based health insurance and other non-wage compensation,
the effects of Social Security and private pensions on labor
supply, the evaluation of retirement wealth, and retirement
expectations and realizations. She is a member of the National
Academy of Social Insurance, the Board of Outside Scholars
of the Michigan Retirement Research Center, and co-editor of
the Social Insurance Research Network on Social Security, Pensions
and Retirement Income.
KANIKA KAPUR,
PH.D. Kanika Kapur is an economist with RAND in Santa Monica, California. She received her Ph.D. in 1997 from Northwestern University and her B.A. in 1992 from Dartmouth College. Her research interests span several areas of health and labor economics. She has authored several studies that examine the labor market implications of employer provided health insurance. She has also studied the role of individual health insurance market in reaching the uninsured. In other work, she has examined the determinants of health expenditures, including the importance of health plan structure and the role of socio-economic and racial characteristics.
PATRICIA KEENAN,
PH.D.
Patricia Seliger Keenan is a postdoctoral fellow in Aging and Health
Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Next year,
she will be an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public
Health. She received a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University
in 2005. Her research focuses on health insurance markets, aging
policy, and health care regulation and politics.
MILES S. KIMBALL, PH.D.
Miles Kimball does research on business cycles, economic behavior under uncertainty, and the survey measurement of preference parameters. He is particularly interested in labor supply, the timing of retirement, consumption/saving choices, portfolio allocation on the household side and the effects of technology shocks on the economy as a whole.
BRENT KREIDER, PH.D.
Brent Kreider (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an associate professor of economics at Iowa State University . His fields of specialization include public economics, applied econometrics, labor economics, and health economics. Recent empirical work develops methods for improving inferences about relationships between public policy and outcome measures of interest such as labor supply, program participation, and health care utilization among the disabled and other low-income groups. Part of this research investigates what can be learned in the presence of non-classical measurement error in key variables, such as disability or health insurance status. Although primarily an applied economist, he has also written theoretical articles on optimal taxation, tax incidence, income uncertainty, and human capital accumulation.
HANNS KUTTNER, M.A.
As Senior Research Associate at The Economic
Research Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU) at the University of
Michigan,
Mr. Kuttner is responsible for liaison with policy audiences
and works on translating research results for general audiences.
Prior to joining ERIU at its inception in 2001,
Mr. Kuttner was the founding policy director of the Josiah Bartlett
Center for Public Policy, a research organization focused on
New Hampshire issues. He also served as a staff member for the
Illinois Governor's Task Force on Human Services Reform and the
District of Columbia Tax Revision Commission.
Mr. Kuttner also worked at the Department of Health
and Human Services' congressional liaison office as special assistant
to the administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration,
now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
During the first Bush Administration, he served as a member of
the White House policy staff, responsible for health and social
issues.
Mr. Kuttner received his MA from the University
of Chicago's Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy
Studies.
KEVIN LANG, PH.D.
Kevin Lang received his BA in Philosophy, Politics and
Economics (PPE) from Oxford University, his MSc in economics from
the University of Montreal, and his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. He is presently a professor and chair
of the department of economics at Boston University. He serves
as co-editor of Labour Economics, the journal of the European Association
of Labor Economists. He spent a year at the National Bureau of
Economic Research (where he is presently a Research Associate)
on a prestigious Olin Foundation Fellowship and three months at
the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research on a Fullbright
Fellowship. He was the recipient of a Sloan Foundation Faculty
Research Fellowship. Dr. Lang's research has been funded by several
grants from the National Science Foundation. His research focuses
on the economics of labor markets and education, including such
topics as discrimination, unemployment, the relation between education
and earnings and the relation between housing prices, taxes and
local services. In addition to publishing widely in leading academic
journals, Dr. Lang maintains an active role in public affairs.
He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Employment
Research Forum. In his home town of Brookline, Massachusetts, he
serves as chair of the elected school board.
HO JIN LEE, PH.D.
Ho Jin Lee is currently an economist with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. He continues to work with academics to finalize research that was initiated, while at the University of California, Irvine, as both a graduate student and a post-doctorate researcher. This research includes work in the fields of public health insurance and public assistance. He earned a bachelors degree from the University of California, San Diego.
PHIL LEVINE, PH.D.
Phil Levine is an associate professor of economics at Wellesley College, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Joint Center for Poverty Research. He has also served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Phil received a BS degree with honors from Cornell University in 1985 and a PhD from Princeton University in 1991. He has been a member of the faculty at Wellesley since then. His research has largely been devoted to empirical examinations of the impact of government programs and social legislation on individuals' and firms' behavior. Topics include: (1) the impact of imperfect experience rating in the unemployment insurance system on firms' layoff behavior, (2) whether welfare recipients move between states because of differences in welfare generosity, and (3) the impact of abortion legalization on fertility behavior.
HELEN LEVY, PH.D.
Helen G. Levy is Research Assistant Professor at the Institute
for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and an Assistant
Research Scientist at the Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured.
Her interests include health and labor economics. Her most recent
work explores trends in health insurance coverage for low-skilled
adults and the consequences of being uninsured for access to medical
care.
Levy received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University
in 1998. From 1998 to 2000, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California
at Berkeley. She has served as a research analyst for the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation and is a faculty research fellow of the
National Bureau of Economic Research.
ANTHONY T. LO SASSO, PH.D.
Anthony T. Lo Sasso, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Senior
Research Scientist in the Health Policy and Administration
Division at the School of Public Health at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Lo Sasso is an economist and applied
econometrician whose research spans several dimensions of health
and labor economics and health services research. He received
his doctorate in economics in 1996 from Indiana University,
Bloomington. He is currently in the final year of a 5-year
Independent Scientist Award from the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality studying workplace health benefits and
how they affect employee health. As part of this broad research
agenda, Dr. Lo Sasso has recently completed a study funded
by the National Institute of Mental Health to examine the impact
of an expansion of mental health benefits on cost and quality
of care at a Fortune 50 manufacturing firm. In addition, Dr.
Lo Sasso is currently studying the nascent consumer-driven
health care movement and its potential impact on employer-sponsored
health insurance and employee health. Other recent research
has examined the effect of copayment levels on the use of employer-provided
substance abuse benefits. Additionally, he has explored the
extent of so-called “responsible purchasing” by
employers: the degree to which employers collect and use non-financial
information in selecting and managing employee health care
plans.
Dr. Lo Sasso is also keenly interested in how government
policies affect private sector decisions. He has studied the
impact of
the State Children's Health Insurance Program on uninsurance
among children and the extent to which public coverage may have “crowded
out” private coverage of children. He currently has a grant
to study how community rating provisions in state non-group health
insurance markets affect non-group health insurance coverage
and uninsurance. Dr. Lo Sasso also has recently completed a project
funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Changes
in Health Care Financing and Organization initiative to study
how the availability of safety net health care services affects
the willingness of firms to offer health insurance and the willingness
of employees to take-up health insurance when it is offered.
CHING-TO ALBERT MA, PH.D.
Ching-to Albert Ma is professor of economics at Boston University, and the Director of the Industry Studies Program of the Boston University Economics Department. He is a coeditor of the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, and an associate editor of the Rand Journal of Economics. Ma's research areas are in industrial organization, and health economics. His recent papers study dual-market job incentives, physician agency and asymmetric information, patient compliance and treatment progress, and selection in insurance and healthcare markets. In 1998, together with coauthor Thomas McGuire, Ma was awarded the Kenneth J. Arrow Award in Health Economics. He received a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1988.
BRIGETTE MADRIAN, PH.D.
Brigitte Madrian is an Associate Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School where she holds the Boettner Chair in Financial Gerontology. Before coming to Wharton in 2003, she was a faculty member at the University of Chicago (1995-2003) and Harvard University (1993-1995). She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources.
Dr. Madrian's research focuses on employee benefits and social insurance programs, particularly retirement savings plans and health insurance. Her current research focuses on the relationship between 401(k) plan design and employee saving outcomes. She has also examined the impact of health insurance on the job choice and retirement decisions of employees and the hiring decisions of firms.
Dr. Madrian received her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied economics as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. She is the recipient of the National Academy of Social Insurance Dissertation Prize (first place, 1994) and the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Scholarly Research on Lifelong Financial Security (2002).
M. SUSAN MARQUIS, PH.D.
M. Susan Marquis (Ph.D., Economist, University of Michigan, 1978) is a Senior Economist at RAND in Washington, DC. She has over 30 years experience in analysis of health policy issues. Her research emphasizes policies to expand health insurance coverage and the effect of financing on access to health care. Dr. Marquis recently led a project to study the individual insurance market in California and explore how financial subsidies and other public policy might increase the role that market plays in covering the uninsured. She also recently completed a simulation study of the effects of California's pay or play employer mandate that was enacted in 2003 and subsequently narrowly overturned in referendum. She has led studies of the effect of state insurance market reforms, of Medicare beneficiary choices among alternative types of health plans, the demand for supplementary health insurance, and the effects of alternative financing policies on demand for private and public insurance. She has participated in designing and implementing evaluations of innovative financing arrangements and was a member of the RAND Health Insurance Experiment analysis team. She has served on advisory and technical panels for HCFA, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the Physician Payment Review Commission, the National Institutes of Health, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Washington Business Group on Health. She has presented her research before academic and policy audiences, including testimony before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. She received the NIHCM Sixth Annual Health Care Research Award in 1999.
NAN L. MAXWELL, PH.D.
Nan L. Maxwell is a Professor and Co-Chair of Economics
and the Executive Director of the Human Investment Research and
Education (HIRE) Center at California State University, Hayward.
She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Florida State University
in 1983 and was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Urban and
Regional Development (for three years) and the National Center
for Research in Vocational Education at the University of California,
Berkeley and has held a visiting professor position at the Academy
of National Economy (Moscow, Russia). Dr. Maxwell's research
interest fall broadly within the field of labor economics. She
is the author or co-author of papers published in leading economic
and education journals, including Industrial and Labor Relations
Review, Industrial Relations, Economic Inquiry, American
Economic Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Economics
of Education Review, Journal of Educational Research, Social
Science Quarterly, Population Policy Review, American
Journal of Economics and Sociology, Contemporary Policies
Issues, and Social Forces.
She has published two books, High School Career Academies:
A Pathway to Educational Reform in Urban Schools? (published by the W.E.
Upjohn Institute) and Income Inequality in the United States,
1947-1985
(published by Greenwood Press) and has a third, Moving on Up:
Getting, Keeping and Moving from Low-Skilled Jobs, currently under review.
THOMAS G. MCGUIRE, PH.D.
Thomas G. McGuire, Ph.D., is Professor of Health Economics in
the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.
His research focuses on 1) the design and impact of health
care payment systems, 2) the economics of health care disparities
and 3) the economics of mental health policy. Dr. McGuire has
contributed to the theory of physician, hospital, and health
plan payment. His current research includes application of
theoretical and empirical methods from labor economics to the
area of health care disparities. He has analyzed the reasons
behind "discrimination" by doctors, and conducted
empirical research to identify the contribution of the various
mechanisms behind health care disparities. For more than 25
years, Dr. McGuire has conducted academic and policy research
on the economics of mental health.
Dr. McGuire was the 1981
recipient of the Elizur Wright Award from the American Association
of Risk and Insurance for his book,
Financing Psychotherapy, and he has cochaired four NIMH-sponsored
conferences on the Economics of Mental Health. He received
the 1998 Arrow Award (joint with Albert Ma) from the International
Health Economics Association. In 1991 he received the Carl
Taube
Award from the American Public Health Association. Dr. McGuire
is a member of the Institute of Medicine, and a co-editor of
the Journal of Health Economics. Dr. McGuire received his A.B.
degree from Princeton and his Ph.D. degree in economics from
Yale University.
ROBIN MCKNIGHT,
PH.D.
Robin McKnight is an assistant professor of economics at the University
of Oregon and a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau
of Economic Research (NBER). Prior to joining the UO faculty in
2003, she earned a PhD in economics at MIT and held
a post-doctoral fellowship in the economics of aging and health
at the NBER. Her research interests span the fields of public economics
and health economics, including issues that arise from government
intervention in health insurance markets, such as through Medicare
reimbursement policy.
CATHERINE MCLAUGHLIN, PH.D.
Dr. McLaughlin is a Professor in the Department
of Health Management and Policy and the Director of the Economic
Research Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU) at the University
of Michigan. ERIU, a five-year initiative funded by The Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, has been conducting and disseminating
research aimed at increasing our understanding of the interaction
between health and labor market dynamics and the uninsured. In
addition, Dr. McLaughlin is the director of the University of
Michigan component of the Agency for Health Care Policy Research's
Center of Excellence on Managed Care Markets and Quality directed
by Harold Luft at University of California, San Francisco. The
projects being pursued at Michigan focus on the dynamic interaction
between plan performance measures, market structure, and employer
behavior.
Dr. McLaughlin is also currently the Vice-Chair
of the Citizens' Health Care Working Group and a Senior
Associate Editor of Health Services Research. From 1993 to 2003
she was the Director of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's
Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at Michigan. Her current
research interests are focused on the uninsured, managed care,
market competition, and employer and employee benefit choice.
Dr. McLaughlin has studied various health economics
topics. She has published numerous articles on the impact of
HMOs on market competition and health care costs, the determinants
of small area variation in hospital utilization and costs, and
issues surrounding the working uninsured. Recent publications
include: “The Long-Term and Short-Term Effects of a Copayment
Increase on the Utilization and Expenditures of Prescription
Drugs,” in Inquiry, “Donated Care Programs:
A Stopgap Measure or a Long-Run Alternative to Health Insurance?” in Journal
of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, “Quality
and Employers' Choice of Health Plans,” in Journal
of Health Economics, "Causes and Consequences of Lack
of Health Insurance: Gaps in Our Knowledge," in Health
Policy and the Uninsured , Urban Institute Press; "Who
Walks Through the Door? The Effect of the Uninsured" in Health
Affairs; "Medigap Premiums and Medicare HMO Enrollment" in Health
Services Research; "The Who, What, and How of Managed
Care," The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law; "Health
Care Consumers: Choices and Constraints" in Medical
Care Research and Review, "Competition, Quality of
Care, and The Role of Consumers," in The Milbank Quarterly,
and "The Demand for Health Insurance Coverage by Low-Income
Workers: Can Reduced Premiums Achieve Full Coverage?," in Health
Services Research.
Professor McLaughlin received her Ph.D. in economics
from the University of Wisconsin.
ALAN C. MONHEIT, PH.D.
Alan C. Monheit is Professor, School of Public Health,
Department of Health Systems and Policy, University of Medicine
and Dentistry
of New Jersey. He is also a Research Professor at the UMDNJ Center
for Health Economics and Health Policy and at Rutgers University's
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research and
its Center for State Health Policy. He has held research positions
at the Boston University's Health Policy Institute and School of
Medicine and was also Director of the Division of Social and Economic
Research in the Center for Cost and Financing Studies, Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Monheit's research interests
include the relationship between employment and health insurance,
health insurance dynamics, the uninsured population, the distribution
of health care expenditures, regulation of health insurance markets,
and children's access to health care. He is an editor and contributor
to Informing American Health Care Policy: The Dynamics of Medical
Expenditure and Insurance Surveys, 1987 - 1996 and State Insurance
Market Reform: Toward Inclusive and Sustainable Health Insurance
Markets. Dr. Monheit received the first Administrator's Award for
Health Services Research from the Agency for Healthcare Research
and Quality and is a Fellow of the Employee Benefit Research Institute
and a member of the National Academy of Social insurance.
LEN NICHOLS, PH.D.
Len Nichols is the Director of the Health Policy Program
at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C. He is responsible
for shaping the Foundation's approach to health care policy,
focused on expanding health insurance coverage to all Americans
while reigning in costs and improving the efficiency of the overall
health care system. Prior to joining New America, Dr. Nichols was
the Vice President of the Center for Studying Health Systems Change.
He has also been a Principal Research Associate at The Urban Institute,
and the Senior Advisor for Health Policy at the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) during the Clinton Health Reform efforts of 1993-1994.
Prior to OMB, Dr. Nichols was a visiting Public Health Service
Fellow at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research during
1991-1992, and prior to that he was an Associate Professor and
Economics Chair at Wellesley College, where he taught from 1980-1991.
He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois
in 1980.
LYNN PARINGER, PH.D.
Dr. Lynn Paringer is a Professor of Economics and the Associate Director of the Human Investment in Research and Education (HIRE) Center at California State University, East Bay. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the Prague School of Economics, served as the Associate Dean of the School of Business and Economics at California State University, Hayward, and was a Research Associate at the Urban Institute (Washington D.C.). She is a nationally recognized expert in health economics with areas of emphasis including access to health insurance, economic cost of disease, HIV costs and testing, medical care utilization, the provision of employment based health insurance to disadvantaged workers, and employer responses to rising health care costs and the impact of case mix adjustments on health plan performance ratings. She has published in leading economic and health care journals including Health Affairs, Inquiry, Quarterly Review of Business and Economics, Health Care Financing Review, American Economic Review, Medical Care, Health Policy Education, and Public Health Reports.
Dr. Paringer received her doctorate in Economics from the University of Wisconsin.
MARK V. PAULY, PH.D.
Mark V. Pauly currently holds the position of Bendheim Professor in the Department of Health Care Systems at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He received the Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia. He is Professor of Health Care Systems, Insurance and Risk Management and Business and Public Policy, at the Wharton School and Professor of Economics, in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pauly is a former commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Commission and an active member of the Institute of Medicine. One of the nation’s leading health economists, Dr. Pauly has made significant contributions to the fields of medical economics and health insurance. His classic study on the economics of moral hazard was the first to point out how health insurance coverage may affect patients’ use of medical services. Subsequent work, both theoretical and empirical, has explored the impact of conventional insurance coverage on preventive care, on outpatient care, and on prescription drug use in managed care. He is currently studying the effect of poor health on worker productivity. In addition, he has explored the influences that determine whether insurance coverage is available and, through several cost effectiveness studies, the influence of medical care and health practices on health outcomes and cost. His interests in health policy deal with ways to reduce the number of uninsured through tax credits for public and private insurance, and appropriate design for Medicare in a budget-constrained environment. Dr. Pauly is a co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics and an associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. He has served on Institute of Medicine panels on public accountability for health insurers under Medicare and on improving the supply of vaccines.
HAROLD POLLACK, PH.D.
Harold Pollack is Associate Professor of Social Service
Administration at the University of Chicago. He has published widely
at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His
recent research concerns HIV and hepatitis prevention efforts for
injection drug users, drug abuse and dependence among welfare recipients
and pregnant women, infant mortality prevention, and child health.
His research appears in such journals as Journal of the American
Medical Association, Medical Decision Making, Pediatrics, and Social
Service Review. Professor Pollack has been appointed to two committees
of the Institute of Medicine. He holds masters and doctorate degrees
in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University.
STEVE RAPHAEL, PH.D.
Steve Raphael is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1996. Raphael's primary fields of concentration are the economics of racial inequality, labor markets, and crime. Raphael has authored several research projects investigating the relationship between racial segregation in housing markets and the relative employment prospects of African-Americans. Raphael has also written theoretical and empirical papers on the economics of discrimination, the role of access to transportation in determining employment outcomes, the relationship between unemployment and crime, the role of peer influences on youth behavior, the effect of trade unions on wage structures, and homelessness.
ANNE ROYALTY, PH.D.
Anne Royalty is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Prior to coming to IUPUI, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Royalty's current research focuses on employer-provided health insurance and other fringe benefits. Recent work includes analyses of price elasticities for employer-provided health insurance, estimation of workers' valuation of employer expenditures on health insurance benefits, and investigations of health insurance choices of two-earner households.
JOHN RUST, PH.D.
John Rust is Professor of Economics at University
of Maryland. He was previously a Professor of Economics at Yale University from 1996 to 2001 and
a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin from
1983 to 1995. Rust received his PhD from MIT in 1983, specializing
in applied econometrics. His research has focused on the development
of computationally tractable methods for empirically modeling
dynamic decision making under uncertainty. Over the last decade
Rust has been involved in several applications of these methods
to the empirical analysis of retirement behavior. Rust is currently
working on building a comprehensive integrated model of social
insurance at the end of the life cycle for use
in policy evaluation. Given the rapid growth in the Social Security
disability program, his most recent work has focused on integrating
disability insurance into a model of retirement behavior, and
understanding the impacts of the disability appeals process modeled
as a “game” between applicants and the government.
Rust is currently working with a team of researchers to develop
a dynamic programming model of behavior at the end of the life
cycle that includes a detailed treatment of U.S. Social Security
policy including the Old Age, Survivors, Medicare and Disability
Insurance programs.
Rust's research on retirement behavior
is internationally recognized. He was an advisor to the Steering
Committee that designed the forthcoming Health and Retirement
Survey (HRS), which will represent the key source
of data for research on health retirement issues in the coming
decade. Rust is a member of the Long Term Modeling Advisory Panel
at the Congressional Budget Office and he has served as a member
of the Economics Panel of the National Science Foundation and
the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academy
of Science, as a member of the Panel on Retirement Income Modeling.
In September 2000, Rust was appointed to a panel of consultants
to the Social Security Administration to advise it on the design
of demonstration projects mandated under the 1999 Ticket to Work
Act and the Work Incentives Improvement Act.
MICHAEL L. SCHOENBAUM, PH.D.
Michael Schoenbaum (PhD in Economics, University of Michigan,
1995) is a health and labor economist at the RAND Corporation.
He is currently leading analyses of the Palestinian health system,
to identify policy options for improving clinical performance and
economic viability; and he is leading economic analyses for several
large-scale trials to improve care for depresssion. His research
has included analyses of the costs and benefits of interventions
to improve health care quality, evaluated from the perspectives
of patients, providers, taxpayers and society; of the effectiveness
of public health interventions, including infant nutrition, immunization,
and community healthworker programs; of the social epidemiology
and economic consequences of chronic illness and disability; and
of health risk behavior, particularly cigarette smoking. Dr. Schoenbaum
is also co-developer of RAND's Health Cost and Flexible Spending
Account Calculators, web-based modeling and decision-support tools
to help consumers make health benefits choices. Prior to joining
RAND in 1997, Dr. Schoenbaum spent two years at the University
of California, Berkeley, as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar
in health policy. He is based in RAND's Washington office.
SARAH SENESKY DOLFIN, PH.D.
Sarah Senesky Dolfin is a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Her interests focus broadly on labor economics, including labor supply and the role of employers in determining hours of work. Her current work in the labor area involves examining the effect of overtime laws, measuring compliance with FLSA regulations, and evaluating the impact of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program on workers' wage and employment outcomes. Dolfin also pursues research on education and immigration, including evaluating the impact of high-intensity mentoring support for teachers on student and teacher outcomes, and analyzing the role played by networks in migration decisions.
Prior to her current position, Dolfin was an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine. She received a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 2000 and a B.A. magna cum laude in economics from Princeton University.
MATTHEW D. SHAPIRO, PH.D.
Matthew D. Shapiro is Lawrence R. Klein Collegiate Professor
and Chair of Economics and Research Professor in the Survey Research
Center at the University of Michigan. He is also a Research Associate
of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Shapiro received B.A.
and M.A. degrees from Yale in 1979 and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1984.
Shapiro's general area of research is macroeconomics. He
has carried out projects on investment and capital utilization,
business-cycle fluctuations, consumption and saving, financial
markets, fiscal policy, monetary policy, time-series econometrics,
and survey research. Among his current research interests are assessing
how recent changes in tax policy affect investment, employment,
and output, modeling saving, retirement, and portfolio choices
of households, improving the quality of national economic statistics,
and using surveys to address questions in macroeconomics.
EMILY SHELTON, PH.D. Student
Emily Shelton is a Ph.D. student in the University of Michigan Department of Health Management and Policy. She earned a B.A. from the University of Iowa and worked for 2 years in the health and human resources division at the Congressional Budget Office. Her research topics include the demand for medical care and health insurance, including labor market sorting and Medicare hospital reimbursement policy. Next year, she will advance to candidacy.
DAN SILVERMAN, PH.D.
Dan Silverman is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan . He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in the Spring of 2002. Dr. Silverman's research interests bridge public and labor economics. He has authored papers on the effects of welfare reform on labor supply, the economics of violent crime, and the potential social sources of income disparities. Recent work investigates the influence of cognitive biases on the decision to invest in health insurance and healthy activities.
KOSALI SIMON, PH.D.
Kosali Simon is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to her current position, she was an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Michigan State University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from University of Maryland at College Park in 1999. Her research and teaching interests focus on policy oriented issues in health economics, labor economics and public finance.
JAMES SMITH, PH.D.
James Smith (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1972) holds the RAND Chair in Labor Markets and Demographic Studies and was the Director of RAND's Labor and Population Studies Program from 1977-1994. He has led numerous projects, including studies of immigration, the economics of aging, black-white wages and employment, wealth accumulation and savings behavior, and the interrelation of health and economic status. He is currently a co-Principal Investigator for The New Immigrant Survey.
Dr. Smith was the Chair of the Panel on Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration (1995-1997), for the National Academy of Sciences. The Panel was convened to examine the interconnections of immigration, population, and the economy, and to provide evidence about the impact of immigration. Dr. Smith has served on the Population Research Committee at the National Institutes of Health. He currently serves on the NIA Data Monitoring Committee for the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) and was chair of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Dr. Smith was the public representative appointed by the Governor on the California OSHA Board. He has received the National Institutes of Health MERIT Award, the most distinguished honor NIH grants to a researcher.
NEERAJ SOOD, PH.D.
Dr. Sood is an associate economist in RAND. He has extensive
experience in doing health economics and health policy research.
His prior work at RAND includes studying the effects of new
HIV treatments on risky behavior among the infected and uninfected,
evaluating the role of payment generosity on resource use for
acute care patients, examining the effects of insurance on
HIV related mortality and evaluating the role of price regulation
in health and life insurance markets. He is also a member of
an advisory committee helping the state of California evaluate
policy options for financing and delivery of prescriptions
drugs to low income HIV+ persons. Dr Sood's work has been published
in several peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of
Health Economics and Journal of Risk and Insurance. Prior to
joining RAND he worked in the Health Outcomes Evaluation Group
at Eli Lilly.
KATHERINE SWARTZ, PH.D.
Prof. Swartz's current research interests focus on the population without health
insurance and efforts to increase access to health care coverage, as well as
health care financing and organization. She is finishing a book on the uninsured
and how government-sponsored reinsurance could increase access to private health
insurance coverage. The book is tentatively titled Reinsuring Health; it should
be published by Spring 2006.
Prof. Swartz has been a member of the faculty
in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of
Public Health since 1992. From 1982 to
1992, she was with the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. In November 1995,
Prof. Swartz became the editor of Inquiry, a journal that focuses on health
care organization and financing. She was the 1991 recipient of
the David Kershaw Award
from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management for research
done before the age of 40 that has had a significant impact on
public policy. She
has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin and a BS in economics
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
WEI-HUA TIAN, PH.D.
Wei-Hua Tian is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. She has a Ph.D. (2004) in Economics from the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include Labor Economics, Health Economics, and Public Economics with specializations in analyzing the policy effects of social welfare programs.
JESSICA VISTNES, PH.D.
Jessica Vistnes is a Senior Economist in the Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Her research focuses on Employment-related health insurance coverage, the health insurance status of the U.S. population, the demand for Medigap insurance, and children's health care utilization. Her publications have appeared in Health Affairs, the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Inquiry, the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, the National Tax Journal, Medical Care and Medical Care Research and Review. She joined AHRQ in 1989 after receiving a
Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.
EBONYA WASHINGTON, PH.D.
Ebonya Washington is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale University. Her current research interests include public finance and political economy.
Dr. Washington received her Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.
DAVID R. WEIR, PH.D.
David R. Weir (Ph.D., Economics, Stanford University,
1983; A.B. History, University of Michigan, 1976) is Research Professor
in the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of
Michigan, and co-Director of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS),
funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Prior to joining
ISR, he was Research Associate in the Harris School of Public Policy
at the University of Chicago, and the recipient of a Special Emphasis
Research Career Award in the Economics and Demography of Aging
from NIA entitled “Economic Aspects of Chronic Disease.” Prior
to that he was Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University,
working on economic history and historical demography, primarily
of Europe. His current research interests include the measurement
of health-related quality of life; the use of biological and performance
measures in surveys; the role of supplemental health insurance
in the Medicare population; the effects of health, gender, and
marital status on economic well-being in retirement; and the effects
of early-life experience on longevity and health at older ages.
DAVID R. WILLIAMS, PH.D.
Dr. David R. Williams is the Harold W. Cruse Collegiate Professor of Sociology, Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research, Professor of Epidemiology, and Faculty Associate in the Program for Research on Black Americans and the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Sociology, Yale University, and Associate Professor of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Williams' research has focused on social influences on health and he is centrally interested in the trends and determinants of socioeconomic and racial differences in mental and physical health. He is the author of more than 100 scholarly papers in scientific journals and edited collections and his research has appeared in leading journals in sociology, psychology, medicine, public health and epidemiology. He has served on the editorial board of 6 scientific journals and as a reviewer for more than 40 others. In 1995, he received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and in 2001, he was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Williams has served on the Department of Health and Human Services' National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (and chair of its subcommittee on Minority and Other Special Populations), and the National Science Foundation's Board of Overseers for the General Social Survey. He has also held elected and appointed positions in professional organizations, such as the American Sociological Association and the American Public Health Association. Currently, he is on the board of directors of Academy Health and a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care and also serves on its Panel on Race, Ethnicity and Health in Later Life.
ROBERT J. WILLIS
Robert J. Willis, is Professor of Economics and Senior Research Scientist in the Survey Research Center and Population Studies Center of the Institute for Social Research. He is the Principal Investigator for the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal survey of over 22,000 persons over age 50 in the United States, which is supported by the National Institute on Aging. Professor Willis received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1971. He joined the University of Michigan in 1995 and holds joint appointments with the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research and the Population Studies Center. Before coming to Michigan, Professor Willis held appointments at the University of Chicago, SUNY at Stony Brook, and Stanford University. He was winner this year of the Mindel Sheps Award from the Population Association of America for outstanding contributions to mathematical demography and is currently President-elect of the Midwest Economics Association. He has served on a number of advisory boards including, currently, StatAEA, the Board of Visitors of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College, and the Technical Review Panel of the National Longitudinal Studies. Professor Willis' research interests include labor economics, economic demography, economic development and the economics of aging. He is currently working on the relationship between cognition and wealth, studying the influence of probabilistic thinking on savings behavior using the HRS. He has also been active in promoting international development of data bases on health, aging and retirement in Europe and elsewhere.
BARBARA WOLFE, PH.D.
Barbara Wolfe is a Professor in the departments of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Lafollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also an affiliate and past director of the Institute for Research on Poverty. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1977. Her current research projects focus on health economic, in particular, child health, persons with disabilities, and the tie between health, race, income, and wealth. Professor Wolfe is particularly interested in vulnerable populations such as those in poor families. Her recent research has included exploring the adequacy of resources of new retirees and of persons with disabilities, the association of income and wealth with health, who obtains employer based health insurance, and the impact of welfare reform on maintaining health care coverage. She has published extensively in economics journals and serves on the board of a number of professional organizations. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine.
AARON YELOWITZ, PH.D.
Dr. Aaron Yelowitz is currently an Associate Professor in
the Department of Economics at University of Kentucky. He also is
a joint faculty member in the Martin School of Public Policy and
Administration at University of Kentucky. He is also a Research Associate
at National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at the
Joint Center for Poverty Research, and a Research Associate at Institute
for Research on Poverty, and the economics department liaison for
the UK Center for Poverty Research. He serves as an associate editor
for the Journal of Public Economics.
Dr. Yelowitz received his Ph.D.
from MIT in 1994, and has previously worked at UCLA as an assistant
professor. He has received funding from the Association
for Public Policy and Management, the Economic Research Initiative for the
Uninsured, the National Academy of Science, Employment Policies
Institute, Social Security
Administration, the Joint Center for Poverty Research, and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. His publications focus on the economic consequences of Medicaid,
public housing, SSI, WIC, Food Stamps, and AFDC/TANF. Many of the papers focus
on the linkages between different poverty alleviation programs, such as the
disincentives to leave AFDC because of the loss of Medicaid health
insurance. He has published
articles in the Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics,
Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human
Resources, Economic Inquiry and Pediatric Neurology. He has refereed
for more than 25 peer-reviewed
publications, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy,
and Quarterly Journal of Economics. He has presented his research in more than
50 academic settings, including MIT, Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago,
and National Bureau of Economic Research.
Dr. Yelowitz has taught
graduate classes on public economics and health economics, and
undergraduate classes on labor economics, public economics, and
poverty
and welfare programs. Many of his research papers appear on the graduate syllabi
for labor economics, public finance, and health economics at major economics
departments throughout the country.
Dr. Yelowitz's most recent work focuses
on the impacts of living wage mandates and health insurance mandates. He has
presented his living wage research at the
American Economic Association meetings, to the City of Atlanta Living Wage
Commission, and to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He has also testified as an
expert witness
in the Santa Fe Living Wage trial. His most recent living wage study is forthcoming
in the peer-reviewed journal Economic Development Quarterly. |